Eat meat-free diet and avoid soda drinks and juices from cartons etc.

Don't Eat This Food. You'll Weigh Less
It's a fact of life that we gain weight as we age, and to a certain extent there isn't much we can do about it; however, while researchers in Great Britain were trying to discern how diet and cancer may be linked, they may have stumbled on a way to help people gain less weight than they otherwise would as they get older. It's pretty simple. Just skip the meat.

Women who skip the meat or just eat less of it are far less likely to be overweight or obese. Click to find out why.

Led by Tim Key, the team from the Cancer Research UK charity and the University of Oxford found that switching to a meat-free diet helped people gain less weight over a five-year period, reports Reuters. They examined the eating habits of 22,000 people and found that while all of them put on a few pounds, the meat-eaters who changed to a vegetarian or vegan diet gained the least. "Contrary to current popular views that a diet low in carbohydrates and high in protein keeps weight down, we found that the lowest weight gain came in people with high intake of carbohydrates and low intake of protein," Key told Reuters.

If you're fat in your 40s, you can blame almost all of it on someone else.

The study: The researchers compared the eating habits and subsequent weight gain among people who ate meat and fish, as well as vegetarians and vegans over five years. None of the participants was overweight at the start of the study.

Here's a great trick to prevent middle-age spread. Women who follow this easy diet are far less likely to gain weight once they hit their 50s.

The results: On average, people gained about 4.4 pounds over five years, but those who ate a vegetarian or vegan diet gained less than those who ate meat and fish. "The weight gain was less in the vegans than in the meat-eaters and somewhere in between in the other groups," Key explained to Reuters. "The lowest weight gain was in people who changed their diet to eat fewer animal products."

Love a juicy steak or hamburger? Uh oh. Bad news. Click to find out why you might want to eat something else instead.

He did note that exercise is an important factor in controlling weight, and those who became physically active also gained less weight than those who were sedentary. The study findings were published in the International Journal of Obesity.

More than anything else, this one thing makes us the fattest.